Ferguson shooting

Darren Seals, a leader in the protest against the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, was found dead in a burning car in St. Louis County yesterday. The arson squad responded to a car fire and, after extinguishing it, found Seals’ body. He had been shot. Naturally, the case is being treated as a homicide. According to the St. Louis American, Seals recently uploaded a Facebook Live video saying that »

Readers may remember that during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri over the Michael Brown shooting, many commentators complained about the “militarization” of the police — not just in Ferguson, but throughout the nation. President Obama, never one to resist calls to disadvantage the police, issued an executive order prohibiting federal agencies from providing local police forces with certain kinds of military equipment. At the time, the “militarization” criticism struck me »

Mike Rappaport, a distinguished law professor at the University of San Diego and a leading exponent of originalism, takes issue with a post I wrote called “‘The Ferguson Effect’ Documented in Chicago.” Professor Rappaport says nice things about Power Line, which I appreciate, but calls my piece “really problematic” for two main reasons. First, he finds it outrageous to compare the situation in Chicago to that in Ferguson because in »

Rob Arthur and Jeff Asher at FiveThrityEight show that arrests have declined and gun violence has spiked since the release of the video showing Laquan McDonald being shot and killed by the police. This is evidence of the “Ferguson effect.” Arthur and Asher explain: After some cities saw a rise in crime last year, police chiefs and even the head of the FBI suggested that the United States was experiencing »

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death. The Ferguson, Missouri youth was killed by a police officer whom he violently attacked. No charges were filed against the officer because he acted in self defense. The anniversary served as an occasion for protests in Ferguson. The protests, in turn, served as an occasion for looting and shooting. The Washington Post reports that “while most of those who came to »

Alan Dershowitz, the famous defense lawyer, has called the case against the six Baltimore officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray “a show trial.” The actions of prosecutor Marilyn Mosby “had nothing to do with justice,” but instead amounted to “crowd control,” Dershowitz said in remarks reported by the Daily Caller. With regard to the second-degree murder charges against Caesar Goodson, Dershowitz stated that “there’s no plausible, hypothetical, conceivable »

I wrote here about the staging in Washington, DC of a portion of “Ferguson,” a play based exclusively on the testimony presented to the grand jury that declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson. The full play is scheduled to debut tomorrow in Los Angeles. However, the Daily Caller reports that this week several actors quit the production because once they read the script, they felt it didn’t portray Michael Brown »

On Wednesday evening, April 15, at 7:00 here in Washington DC, there will be a public reading of excerpts from FERGUSON, a play based exclusively on the testimony presented to the grand jury that so sensibly declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson. The performance will take place at the Atlas Performing Arts Center Lab, which is located at 1333 H Street, NE. Prominent lawyers will play the grand jury attorneys. »

St. Louis County officials say they have arrested a 20-year-old Missouri man in connection with the shooting of two local police officers. Jeffrey Williams reportedly has admitted to the shooting. He claims, however, that he did not intend to shoot the police officers. Rather, he fired the shots in connection with a dispute with another individual, but missed his target and struck the officers instead. Anything is possible. Contrary to »

Charles Cooke urges us not to blame the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri on anyone other than the assassin himself: [The two police officers] were not shot by Barack Obama. They were not shot by Eric Holder. And they were not shot by “the media” or by the Democratic party. The shooter wasn’t forced to pull the trigger by “the protests,” and nor was his crime commissioned »

Like all presidents, and probably more than most, President Obama is concerned about his legacy. Obama devoutly hopes that the following sentence will not appear in history books: Although he was the first African-American elected president, race relations worsened during his time in office. It’s not that Obama hates the idea of race relations worsening during his time in office. The idea of “no justice, no peace” may well appeal »

Timothy Zoll, the spokesman for the Ferguson police department who characterized a makeshift memorial to Michael Brown as a “pile of trash in the middle of the street,” has been placed on unpaid leave. As I discussed here, when the Washington Post contacted Zoll after a motorist ran over the Brown “memorial,” Zoll responded (in part) by saying “a pile of trash in the middle of the street; the Washington »

A motorist has run over a memorial erected to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The memorial consisted of odds-and-ends placed in the middle of the street. Brown’s supporters have reassembled it. His supporters claim that the motorist ran over the memorial intentionally. How they know the driver’s intentions is unclear. In any event, it was probably inevitable that items situated in the middle of a street would eventually be run »

Martha Minow, dean of Harvard law school, and Robert Post, dean of Yale law school, have written an op-ed in the Boston Globe about the need to “regain trust in the legal system” following the grand jury “no-bills” in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner killings. It’s a shockingly bad piece, devoid of both evidence and argument. The thesis of the op-ed is that in the criminal justice system, at »

Ammo Grrrll returns with “LEO Encounters 101: A Primer.” She writes: If you have never been pulled over by a Law Enforcement Officer of any kind, you are either Lady Luck’s own child or very very law-abiding. And good for you either way! I was pulled over once in Wisconsin in a 1980 VW Rabbit doing 85 in a 55 zone and the guy let me go with a warning »

Paul Cassell, a former federal judge, has been producing the best analysis I’ve seen of the Ferguson grand jury evidence. I recommend in particular this post, which contains links to others. Cassell notes that Missouri law on self-defense required only that Darren Wilson have a reasonable belief that he needed to use deadly force to defend himself against Michael Brown. Wilson didn’t need to show that his interpretation was the »

Reader Tim in Maryland writes with a thought: Law abiding, tax paying, responsible citizens need some gesture or symbol of solidarity that is photogenic. I am thinking perhaps, one hand over our back pocket/wallet with the other hand waist high outstretched palm forward, as in “don’t come toward me, don’t rob me, don’t try to assault me.” I’m sure Ramirez could render a model. This could become the rallying symbol »